Sunday, October 2, 2016

Lord Increase Our Faith...To Be Better Disciples

(This is part 1 of
three part series of homilies on discipleship that I will be delivering in my
parish this month.)

The
apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” (Luke 17:5)

It took a certain level of humility for
the disciples to ask the Lord to increase their faith.They realized they needed more faith to live
up to the calling the Lord had given them.

This is where we are this Sunday here at
Immaculate.Asking the Lord to increase
our faith as we seek to deepen our relationship with him, as we seek to live up
to our calling to be disciples, and as we seek to go and make disciples.

Over the past few weeks, you’ve been
reading in the bulletin how we are in the middle of a Discipleship Campaign and
that we unveiled a mission statement.Why are we doing this?Well quite
frankly, just as St. John XXIII did over 50 years ago, we need to let some
fresh air into this church, and allow for the Spirit to do great things in
us.We need a mission and we need a
vision.

We already have a mission.Jesus told us as the end of the gospel of
Matthew: “Go and make disciples.”I’ve
been reading this wonderful book on how a parish in Baltimore was rebuilt, and
their pastor had this to say: “Mission is why we exist. Every parish exists for
the same reason…[to `go and make disciples.’] Disciples are students of Jesus
Christ.We’re in the disciple-making
business.That’s our why….vision is [our] what.Vision is a picture of what could be and should be…Without a vision for
our churches and the impact God wants to have through us, bad things can
happen…people go off course…As a church, vision means looking to people we are
not reaching but should be.Vision is
about solving problems and removing the lids that keep our churches from
reaching new people.To only reach the
people you’re reaching now, just keep doing what you’re doing.”But as your pastor, I’m not satisfied with
that.The Archbishop calls doing what
we’re doing “spiritual navel gazing.”“We need to be looking to a future in which we are bringing new people
into a relationship with Christ by doing new things.”

Let me go back that point of removing the
lids that keeps our church from reaching new people.This is where the ministry of hospitality
comes in.Many of you who walked through
the main entrance may have noticed a welcome table as you walked into church. I
want our parish to excel in the virtue of hospitality.We need to be a welcoming community.The letter to the Hebrews tells us: “Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly
entertained angels.” (Hebrews 13:2)So we need to welcome the stranger, reach out to the fellow parishioner
we do not know, and embrace everyone around us. I’ve said this countless times:
we do not come to Mass by ourselves.We
celebrate Mass as a community.

So it’s time for our parish and
parishioners to open the doors of our hearts to everyone.The purpose of this Discipleship Campaign is
to remind us who we are as Christians and to empower you to follow the Lord’s
command to “Go and make disciples.”I’m
challenging you to go out and to bring new people into this church. That’s
start with investing yourself in the mission of the parish.

One last things about this vision, it is
also “about identifying ways [our parishioners] should be increasingly
transformed by Christ.”And here is
where all of us, including your pastor, need to change: we need to approach
Mass every Sunday with the expectation that Christ will transform us and do
something new in us.That is what takes
place in the Eucharist.We need to be
better at hospitality, we need to be better at outreach, we need to be better
at leaving old ways of doing things behind, but in order to accomplish any of
that, we need to get closer to Jesus Christ and allow him to transform us.The Lord expects great things from us.

My
friends, this is a new day for Immaculate.We are committing ourselves to discipleship. We need to ask the Lord to
increase our faith because this is a big endeavor we are undertaking. We are committing ourselves to excelling as a
parish in how we live out our Christianity.Yes, Jesus does expect great things from us.We need to be like the servants at the end of
today’s gospel:When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”

Now
I leave with the following question for you to ponder this coming week:“As a parishioner of Immaculate Conception,
am I doing what I am obliged to do?”